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I am about to put the Advent calendar up tonight. And this year, I am re-using the one I made last year.
I had plans to do just that all along. When I removed it from the wall last year, I packed it carefully in a plastic box and stored it with all the other Christmas decoration. Back then I had no idea that I would just be plain old exhausted come November, and I am now even more grateful I thought about re-using it.

I had very little time to plan anything regarding the calendar this year, mostly because Ishita was on vacation most of the month, and that left me with little energy to work on it in the evenings after her bed time.

This year, all I had to do was thing of what to put inside the advent calendar. Normally in Europe, you can get away with buying a ready made calendar filled with chocolates and candies, of even trinkets for some of the most elaborate ones. But, I grew up with the home made ones, my mom would do it every year when my sister and I were little. It was filled with a mix of trinkets and sweet treats. A thing I have happily replicated all these years for Ishita.

This is the good thing with Advent calendars, they really can be as simple or as complicated as you want. They can follow a theme, they can be all about edible things, or building a collection...there are no limits (other than monetary).

This year I am stuffing each cups with some cute stickers and craft supplies Ishita can use. Hopefully this will put an end to her raiding my drawers and using my supplies (which aren't all washable and kids friendly).

Three years ago I did a Hair accessories theme, each goodie bag was containing hair clips or a pretty bow.

In all these years of roaming the internet for inspiration I found an amazing load of cute ideas to fill your Advent Calendar here are some of the ones that stuck with me:

- Unwrapping one ornament a day and placing it on a special Christmas tree

- Opening one wine bottle a day. Who said advent calendars are to be just for kids?

- 24 pieces of paper with 24 Christmas quotes. They can be religious, or not. It could even be just inspirational quotes.

- 24 activities of the day, so that you get to do something Christmas-y ever day of the month, one bit at a time.

- A list of 24 holiday (or not) movies to watch in December. You can either rent them, download them, by the DVD or catch it on TV. Or why not watch all these old movies you love so much? All you need to do is write the titles on 24 strips of paper and put it in your advent calendar (along with a bag of pop corn kernels)

What are some of the ideas you came across when it came to making an advent calendar?

The weather is yet to show signs of really cooling down at the moment (the joy of leaving a tropical climate). In hope of conjuring Winter and cooler days to grace us I decided to put together a Hot chocolate menu card from the chart I mentioned in this post.

This is one of those super easy project anyone with a printer can pull and it ads a little oomph to your living room or kitchen for the season.

First, you will need to go save the Hot Chocolate chart found on the link I just gave you above and print it.
Once you got it on paper, cut the chart out and set aside. Then, find a piece of cardboard big enough to accommodate your printout (I used left over cardboard from one of Ishita's school project).
Paint the cardboard any colour you like, I myself chose a nice chocolate brown, but really any colour you want is just fine.
One the pain has dried, paste your chart on the cardboard, keeping it as centered as possible.

I used a regular glue stick for the job, from experience I know white liquid glue tend to mess with the ink on the printout paper, you want a glue that is the less wet possible for that kind of job.

Once you glued the printout you can decorate the cardboard with embellishment and frills. Of course, me being...well...me, I HAD to use 3D liner paint to do the job, but that is only because I am a glitter glue and 3D liner addict (those of you who come here regularly know all about it). You can use stamps, stickers, regular paint if the stuff of my addiction isn't your thing at all.

Now, all that is left to do is display that master piece where people will see it and be tempted to make themselves a cup (or two). You could totally set up a Hot chocolate station in your kitchen or living room if you have the space for it with all the essentials to spice up your drink at hand.

This also could be the perfect excuse to invite all your friends over for a Hot Chocolate Party (don't you like the sound of that? I sure do).

Meanwhile, you'll probably find me trying to find ways to conjure that tropical heat and humidity to leave us so we can start celebrating Winter over here (we are getting there).

November is in its second half, and to those who care about it, the 1st Advent falls on November 29th this year. To all those who have no idea what I am talking about, the Advents are the 4 Sundays before Christmas. Needless to say that from now on, time will be flying.

I think I made it abundantly clear the previous years that I do not celebrate the Christian way, but the secular way. But regardless of your religious view, Christmas is a holiday that last several weeks. Weeks of preparation and anticipation that culminate to the day itself. In other words, this means you need to start thinking about it long before the actual day. And if you are a DIY type of person, you need to get crafting in November (Which I have plans to do this weekend).

As a result, I spend a lot of time on Pinterest as soon as Diwali is behind us. In India we have such a succession of holidays that I don't feel like their preparation overlapping.
I thought it would be fun for me to share a few of the things that caught my eye on Pinterest recently (at the default of sharing all of Pinterest...can't do that).

Those adorable Christmas tree meringue from the blog "Make Bake Celebrate" are something I totally see myself doing this year. First because I love meringue, and then because I can't believe I never thought of that! Seriously, Look at these and don't tell me you aren't getting any meringue envy.

One of the problem of living in India is that getting a decent Christmas tree isn't always possible depending where you live, but they aren't really necessary to have around to rock a stunning holiday decor:

Pinterest is choc-a-bloc full of DIY tree ideas, of all sizes and in all materials possible, and while finding a tree is not a problem I have, I can totally see myself making one. Which one is still not decided, but this gorgeous Ribbon tree from Tattered & Timeless totally caught my attention.

And, for some reasons, I suddenly find myself craving hot chocolate come December. Something that is quite odd considering i am really not that crazy about milk to begin with.
So because of my sudden visions of hot cocoa milk, this pretty nifty Hot Chocolate recipe list caught my eye:

This list is cute enough to print and frame and display at your dinning table or in your kitchen isn't it? This could be even just the excuse you needed to throw a hot chocolate party in your home. I myself find myself torn between the Peanut Butter and the Orange one (ok I lied I am not torn between them, I SO WILL try both!)

I have a lot of ornaments ideas at the moment, many of which I pinned to my Christmas board, but this blog post was already getting quite image heavy. To sum it, I am getting warmed up for the Christmas season, and have been working on a few blog back stage things as well.

You know, just because I wasn't already super busy enough, and maybe because my name is Cyn...

The air is getting dryer in Mumbai, and along with it the cravings for things that aren't necessarily salads. A little while longer and we will be in Mumbai Winter bliss and comfort food heaven.

To kick start the season (which I might as well call foodie season) I made a batch of chicken liver paté which we enjoyed liberally over here. This creamy spread is the stuff from my childhood, the companion of many dinner and picnic lunches. I grew up mostly with the convenient tubed version, but making your own is really not that hard.
The only difference between the one from my childhood and this one is the lack of a very specific black mushroom we call "cornucopia mushroom" but still tastes awesome (take my words for it).

I make it in big batches, because it doesn't really last that long (I could eat it all day) and it will keep fresh and nice in an airtight container in the fridge for a little over a week, and it freeze well enough. Feel free to half the recipe if you aren't a big liver spread glutton like me though.

Ingredients you will need:400g of Chicken Liver1 large red onion (chopped)200ml of cream (whipped)60ml of brandya sprig of fresh thymesalt and pepper to taste40g of butterHow to do it:
1) Chop your onion and wash the chicken liver under running water. In a thick bottomed pan, melt the butter on medium flame and stir fry the onion and liver, add the thyme and continue cooking until the liver is just about to be done. Add the brandy and turn the heat to high and cook for 2-3 minutes more. The alcohol in the brandy evaporates in the cooking process so do not worry about it.

2) Put the entire content of of the pan in a mixer/blender and blitz to a smooth paste and set aside

3) Whip your cream until it forms stiff peaks with an electric beater. Fold the cream in the liver paste and blend until you get a nice creamy texture, add the salt and pepper to taste and mix it in. Store in an airtight container in the fridge.

The spread is best enjoyed chilled and served on sour dough bread, toasted bread or crackers. You can also put it in a piping bag and pipe it on pieces of apple or pear, or on canapé crackers.

Some of you have asked me to share pictures of my bejeweled lanterns once lit and I am happy to do so.
I mentioned that I would be using LED candles in them as some were really deep and lighting a tea light candle in them would not have been possible. Not to mention some of them were hung high enough to make it a challenging acrobatic feat.
I managed to find one seller that could guarantee me a delivery before the 11th on Amazon. I am fairly satisfied with them though it wouldn't really hurt if they could flicker like real candles (those don't). The only real complain I have is that the light was quite orange, but not to the point of looking really odd.

These lanterns in the pictures were on my chest of drawer in the living room and using LED lights in them was a really good idea as the jars do get really hot when they have real candles in them. Heat that would have damaged the hard wood.
On Diwali itself, I forgot to take pictures of the lanterns hanging on the balcony (bear with me). There was so much light from my other Diwali lights that I am not even sure a balcony picture would have really worked to showcase the lanterns in question anyway.

As far as Diwali is concerned, we had a nice quiet low key one. We had such a hectic past few weeks that not going out of our ways and staying home just felt about right.

To all of you who celebrate it, I am wishing you a Happy Diwali. May it be filled with light and happy moments, and if you plan on bursting crackers, please stay safe.

I put up all the lights in my home yesterday and we made a few more bejeweled lanterns, today we are going to buy some sweets and a few fireworks (the pretty kind like flower pots and chakras) and are going to celebrate at home, as a family. These past few weeks have been very hectic for all of us and we welcome the idea of a small and quiet (well as quiet as it can get during Diwali in India) celebration.

Diwali is just a few days away and the time to decorate has come. In true family fashion DH and I are doing it all at the last minute. I mean we are still in the middle of cleaning the things we were supposed to start cleaning a few weeks ago.

"There is still plenty of time" we said! "We can totally wait" we said!

Until this week when it became clear that postponing the chores was no longer an option. the necessity to grab that steam cleaner and get some deep cleaning done became the need of the hour.
We are seeing the end at the light of the cleaning tunnel people! A few sore muscles later and I am about ready to victoriously throw the towel (in the laundry basket).

To celebrate, I decided to put together a non-messy craft activity (no more cleaning!) to decorate the home for Diwali :

I give you the "Bejeweled jar lanterns" (insert victory trumpet-y sounds here).
My crazy compulsion to save every glass jars and cram them in one of my kitchen cabinet made this little project completely possible and super easy to pull. If you have none lying around you can still throw a big "pre-Diwali" brunch party where all your guests will be force to ingest huge quantity of jams and chutney. Or, buy glass jars like these.

If you either are a pack rat like me or really managed to get your family and friends on your last minute jar collecting campaign, you will need to clean them. If they still have the label on, soak them in a pan filled with warm water to peel it off.
Then, raid your local art supplies and stationary shop to stock up on pretty crystal stickers :

Expert tip: take your daughter along with you to the store, she will help you find all the glittery things you might not have thought of getting. If you don't have a daughter, borrow your niece for the day (your sister or SIL will love you for it). Before leaving the store with your sparkly loot, throw in a couple of pretty metallic wire as well because those lanterns might need a hoop to hang them.

Now that you have your sparkly crystals, the fun can begin. Enlist the help of your kids, and again if you have none, enrol your nieces and nephews (you will become the coolest Aunt and the coolest sister all in one shot). Just stick all those stickers on the jars until you either run out of jars or out of sticker (both problems can of course be solved if you really want to).
Once all the jars are bejeweled, tie a length of metallic wire around them to make a handle (unless you plan to use them as a table decoration).

Ours were destined to go on the balcony, so using the wire was a must:

I used some extra (less pretty) wire to tie them to the grill on my balcony and we are already talking of making a few more. We ran out of stickers so a second shopping trip is in order to replenish our stock.
I was planning to put regular tea light candles in them, but some of them are pretty deep, and hung high up enough so I searched amazon for yellow LED tea lights that could be delivered before the 11th and I promptly bought two packs of these. Oddly enough every single shops in my neighbourhood are only selling the LED candles that change colours all the time, which is not the look I am going for at all.

I have spent the past few months slowly going through the process of editing old blog posts. Because, when you have a blog that is over a decade old, a lot happens. In my case, lot of content looked drab and old.
Until about 2 years ago, I didn't even really keep any style consistency (I don't think I even knew a thing about it to be fair). This resulted in me having pictures of all sizes and formats all over the place. Some posts have large pictures, some have tiny thumbnails, some are square some are rectangle and last but not least some were taken with a crappy camera while others were taken with my point and shoot. Not to mention some had my blogspot URL serving as a watermark.

This travel back in blog time also made me realise one big thing :

I utterly sucked at picture taking. And I mean SUCKED as in double, triple or even quadruple suck. There even was a time I thought editing pictures wasn't important (yeah right!), and yes maybe it wasn't back in those days. Right now I am only starting to touch the tip of the iceberg of the photographic hell that has unleashed on my blog and those pictures from only 1 or 2 years ago aren't even nearly as bad as the ones from before that (which I will tackle soon).

Post by post, I have been editing them in Photoshop, both on my iPad's version (which is free) and on the more heavy duty full fledged paid version I treated myself to just very recently (after a laptop update). Some of these pictures were so nasty that they were beyond the repair of a simple photo editing tool. Like this one:

I think we'll all agree this is not pretty: low resolution, low light pictures taken with the iPad 4 camera, edited in a very basic photo editing app and a watermark that pops more than the actual content I want you to see. Plus, it is rectangle, a format I don't really like anymore (at least not on the blog).

This picture was a bit too much of a mess for Photoshop Express (on the iPad) to handle, so I turned to my laptop and the full power of Photoshop CC to attempt to salvage it :

The rescued picture is by no mean perfect, it was still taken with a low resolution camera in low lighting. But you can probably notice it is already less of a sore eye. I managed to get as much as the noise as I possibly could without loosing too much definition and I made some of these ugly marks on the wall disappear (darn I wished getting rid of the actual real ones on the wall would be that easy).

The point of this whole post being that when you embark on a new venture, you will inevitably suck at time. And guess what? It is completely OK to suck. In fact, I think you should suck, because if you don't, you aren't going to learn to do things better.
If you really want to start taking pictures for your blog, dive right in. Don't wait to be an expert, don't wait until you can afford that digital SLR all seasoned bloggers tell you that you must own (they forgot to tell you they too took crappy pictures at one point).

To quote Nike : Just Do It!

Personally I'd just prefer seeing new bloggers take lousy pictures themselves than new bloggers lifting pictures off Google thinking they are all free to use and stealing the credit of those of us who dared learning to take pictures.

This editing process is a mammoth task at the moment. One that is both daunting and gratifying at the same time. I constantly shake my head wondering what I was even thinking back in the days. But guess what? I also feel I have come a very long way from even just a little over a year ago. I learned a lot, and grew and my photography skills got better along the way.

There is a real sense of accomplishment that comes from it. All this work, all this learning is MINE, I did it on my own, in my own time. By reading as much as I could, by watching videos and by experimenting with my camera and editing apps (yes I have more than one).

So, go grab that camera, any camera (your phone will do great) and take pictures. But most importantly, go suck at it, and accept that it is ok and that you WILL get better with time and practice...yes you will.

Can you believe we are in November already? No, Seriously! I am still stuck somewhere in August or September before the festive season really started. Once again I got sucked into that vortex only to find myself a few days away from Diwali (10 days, but who's counting anyway).

As usual at this time of the year, I find myself wanting to spruce up, upgrade and prettify all I can at home and I had this fine but quite boring white vase for a while.

This vase was a prize I won in a contest a few years ago. It's elegant, minimalistic and modern and in all fairness, quite pretty. The problem is that I don't really do minimalistic and whatever item that fits that label tend to fade in my decor.
This vase is far too white, and too "blah" for my taste. I don't know about you, but it feels like it is one step short of being complete. I always felt there was something missing to it.

I used those pretty crystal stickers and an acrylic paint marker (pardon the blurry picture, I worked on this one at night and I was too absorbed to go grab the DSLR).
Using a paint marker, you'll need to remember to shake the marker regularly and press the tip to bring more paint out.
The paint dries quickly but you may want to work on one segment for a while before rotating the vase. So that whatever paint that comes in contact with the working surface down the line is properly dry when it does. Don't worry though, it is totally possible to do it in one sitting.

This vase usually stays in my very dark (and un-photogenic) hallway, and it sometimes migrate to the study for a change of scenery (I hear it is quite happy there). Because the study (aka the office) is a giant mess at the moment, and not very picture ready, I moved it just for the picture to my living room.
At this point, my next project might as well be to just clean the study before Diwali comes upon us. I keep saying we should tackle it over the weekend, but that is before said weekends become choc-a-block full with activities.

I don't think it is much of a confession at this point, because I already came clear about my love of all things paper when I told you I was a notebook junkie.
I am the type of person that could groan and mutter at the idea of having to go shopping for clothes (wait, could? Noway I totally do...I hate clothes shopping).
However, I get ridiculously exited at the idea of going book shopping (just drop me there and check if I am still alive after a couple of hours) or stationary and art supplies shop.

It is really hard for me to resist the siren call of craft paper, pretty notebooks, stickers, and binder clips.
Ah! Binder clips!

I posted this picture on Instagram yesterday announcing that I felt compelled to by these because they were not only too cute but also "100% Me" as in : totally my style. Sure, I needed them too, I was not looking for them, but we always have a clip problem of one kind at home, so it wasn't a totally frivolous expense (not that should anyone care).
Beside, if you think that is crazy, wait until you see Ishita raid the crystal sticker section.

Tell me that I am in good company and that there are some of you who like me get excited at the sight of pretty office supplies, notebooks, and 3D liner glue (sorry guys I lost the address to the "Glitter glue anonymous" group meeting, can you send it again)!
It can't be just me? You know, being delirious when the new stock of washi tape hits the store? Or the pretty new pens...oh and the 3D liner paint (wait! I said that already right?)

A stationary and art supply shop is the kind of place that let my creativity run WILD, it is thing I have developed since childhood. Other kids would spend their allowances on candies (I did that too, I am not entirely crazy) or trendy toys or items, I would blow mine on stickers, notepads and Hello Kitty Stamp sets (which by the way was totally super mega popular then, you were a cool kid if you had one).

So, are you ready to join the rank of the paper clips nuts? Please tell me you are...pretty pleaaaase!

Oh and if you haven't checked Home Cyn Home's instagram account for your daily fix of all things colour...go follow me there already! That's an order! (Just kidding, but yeah go check it out, it is pretty cool...if I say so myself)

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